eCommerce Conversion Tips To Boost Your Sales This Month

eCommerce is not the next big thing, it is already a BIG thing in today’s world. While online retailers are mushrooming in large quantities across industries, expanding operations and generating revenue is still a problem. Why? Because consumers are pickier than ever and fostering customer loyalty is a real challenge.

According to a Frost & Sullivan study, the B2B eCommerce revenue is likely to top $25 trillion by 2020. In 2014 itself, the revenue cross $5 trillion, so you can imagine how easy it is to cover the remaining $1.7 trillion. The B2C eCommerce is also not far behind – with the global sales expected to hit $1.5 trillion by 2018.

Any online store’s main aim is to boost sales. “The more, the merrier” is their approach. But please keep one thing in mind: there is no such thing as the right conversion rate; variables differ across industries. However, quality of traffic is a major factor.

Moving on, below are a few compelling tips that will give your sales a BIG boost:

1. Design a user-friendly website

Before you start to redesign your website, check the website analytics. Focus majorly on the bounce rate; if it is high then you know you have a problem. After all – it takes only 150 milliseconds to decide a website or not! Not only is visual communication important, but also how easily is one consumer able to navigate the website is also a big factor.

According to Keith Hagen, Vice President – Conversion Services at Inflow, “If you want to get an online shopper’s attention, you need to get in their way, not try to take them where you want them to go. Develop a new persona, call him Ferris the Ferret.”

Product pages are equally important for boosting the sales. You may wonder, but Jon MacDonald, founder and President of The Good, it is important for marketers to also focus on ensuring an effective product detail page.

2. Track your target audience

Marketers must strive to learn what their target audience is up to across different multiple channels. “The reason being that geography, referral source, referring keyword, new/returning visitor, device type, etc. can all have different conversion responses to a test, which may be more effective to target differently (depending on the test hypothesis),” says Linda Bustos, Director of eCommerce Research. Create smart user segments and then tailor their website experience accordingly.

3. Highlight shipping costs upfront

Ugh! Shipping costs are poison, and they instantly compel the almost-buyer to either abandon the shopping cart or empty the cart. One of the biggest factors of eCommerce is free shipping. 93% of buyers will buy more products from an online store if the shipping is free.

So if you can’t avoid the costs, make it clear to the visitor right in the beginning. “Nothing kills conversions like a surprise shipping fee revealed at the very end,” states Peep Laja, Founder, ConversionXL.

4. Implement a solid push strategy

Sensible push notifications can really help you reach out to your consumers quickly on both mobile and web. Here’s what a push strategy effectively does:

Reduce cart abandonment rates by creating a sense of urgency and nudging an action out of almost-buyers.

Generate location-based messages to prompt your consumers to pop into the retail store of the brand in their vicinity.

Encourage wishlisting to better understand what your consumers are exactly looking for and then delivering just that.

Neil Patel, Co-Founder, Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics opines, “When you get these users to come back to your site through remarketing and email marketing, consider redirecting them back to their cart.” The push strategy is an excellent remarketing tactic.

5. Run multiple flash sales and contests

Everyone loves freebies. Everyone loves to shop cheap. Everyone loves to “win” something – that’s the whole point of eCommerce! As 95.5% of consumers love low prices on online stores, it is best to boldly mention any flash sale or ongoing discounts right on the homepage.

Macy’s does a good job on their homepage whenever they run a theme or event specific sale. Due to this particular campaign in 2014, they even saw a rise from 8% to 12% in their online sales in 3 months. The key is to lure the consumers with multiple perks; if you can do that, your conversions will automatically increase.

6. Recommend products

Product recommendations and Amazon Are synonymous with each other as the eCommerce giant is doing a fabulous job with this particular tactic. Seriously – it’s product recommendation system is no joke! To first time visitors, for instance, it shows generic recommendations such as the ones you see in the image below:

Make sure your recommendations are relevant and help the consumers in making an informed decision. Multiple surveys suggest that 70% of consumers expect brands to offer personalization, and what’s better than this to get started!

7. Have an exit strategy

While pop-ups between website browsing are common, they are often seen as intrusive. It’s common sense – consumers can get annoyed if they are asked to fill in their details to subscribe to the brand blog or avail a time-sensitive discount coupon code.

Also, given how high bounce rates of most eCommerce websites are, it is necessary to incorporate a strategy that keeps the consumers engaged. This is where the exit intent strategy comes into the picture, as it helps businesses hold back their businesses a little longer.

These are the common uses of exit intent. You can kiss goodbye to “poor conversion rates” because smart technological advancements can now help you track a visitor’s movement across the website right from the time he lands on it to predict an exit intent.

Founder of Website Optimizer, Rich Page says, “You can experiment with using exit intent pop-ups to show incentives (on the website) – these are now increasingly common on ecommerce sites and work very well for increasing opt-in rates.”

8. Run referral campaigns

There is no other marketing tactic that works better than referrals. Word-of-mouth promotion will not just get you more customers at lower acquisition rates, but also improve your customer retention drastically. And, here is the proof.

Raul Galera, the Partner Manager at ReferralCandy, absolutely swears by the tactic for eCommerce conversion optimization.

9. Leverage user generated content

User generated content is known to be 80X more effective than any form of advertising. Then why is your store holding back from using it to promote products? Share pictures of customers using your products, give them shoutouts on social media for sharing great content and being your constant support!

The more people see your products being used, the more sales you will get – pretty simple, right?

Shane Barker, a digital marketing consultant and influencer clearly states how UGC can be one of the most promising tactics to drive more sales for an eCommerce business.

Over to you

Dealing with consumers is challenging but it is fun. So don’t forget to experiment with different marketing tactics to boost your sales. What may work for one brand may not work for you. Keep your options open!

About the author

Ashfaq Ahmad is a Digital Marketing Consultant at Wigzo and a part-time Blogger at BloggeRoundup. He loves blogging and he’s also a Columnist for TechinAsia, B2C, Dzone, Ezine, and TNW. you can contact him at ashfaq@wigzo.com